Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Trinidad & Tobago have been added to the European Union's blacklist - which only contains countries that are not members - that it says are 'at high risk' of money laundering and terrorist financing.

The EU’s anti-money-laundering directives oblige the European Commission (the nearest thing that the EU has to an executive branch) to draw up a list of 'highly risky' countries. One of the European Parliament's few powers is its veto over blacklists such as this one. For many months, the list has been a source of disagreement between the commission and the parliament. It already contains Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Yemen.

MEPs rejected two previous versions, after disagreements over the methods that the commission used when compiling the list.  Since then, the two bodies have agreed on a new methodology for adding and removing countries. They will start to follow it at the end of this year.

In mid-December, in line with its custom of obeying the pronouncements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world's AML standard-setter, the commission decided to include Tunisia and the other two states to its blacklist, sparking the present controversy.

It has been reported that Vera Jourova, the justice commissioner of the EU, wants to put Saudi Arabia and Panama on the list, although the governments of the EU's great powers - France, Germany and the UK - are not keen on the idea, according to Reuters.

The London Financial Times, which claims to have seen a diplomatic note with the new list on it, believes that it includes the US Virgin Islands and American Samoa but not Russia.

The FATF's list of "high risk and other monitored jurisdictions" consists of the Bahamas, Botswana, North Korea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iran, Pakistan, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and Yemen. Various EU national governments have criticised the body for not including Panama.